Chương 155: AF Chapter 154 – Skipping Some Time

Months pass… The Drain Mana came in to reap some of my power and restore some of the Affliction Wisp's own, ran into my Death Ward, and was immediately denied as a negative energy Drain effect. I stepped around the side of the corridor, and Crown chimed a piercing note as a set of jetsilver needles sped out, impaling the whirling thing as it wondered what had happened.

Sparks popped, there was a distant shriek of energy discombobulating, and I burst into a run towards the doorway behind it, ignoring the disintegrating bodies of the physical moarsmen spawns as I ran for the stairs, taking them two at a time as I headed back to the upper level. There were two ways to run the Catacombs here: To Completion, and To Clear. The latter naturally included the former, but doing the first was much faster if you were capable of running past the many guards and wouldn't get hung up by them.

I'd already done that yesterday. It turns out that Invisibility and Blink are absolutely wonderful for bypassing doors and guards without having to go through the rigmarole of running back and forth pulling levers that this dungeon wanted you to do. As long as I minded my scent, the Summons were only confused when I slipped past them, and Chained Seeking Split Slashing Shardrays hitting a whole slew of the wisps and moarsmen from surprise was a great way to kill a batch of them very quickly.

It did turn out that the northern door at the top and the vault for the jewel were Warded against dimensional hijinks… but the former was not against Knock spells. Given it was a slightly magical lock that changed its combination every time to match the random key dropping off one of the sclavi guards that opened it, there was no memorizing it if you wanted to pick it, it was a fresh try every time. Waving my fingers and opening it saved some time.

I'd killed everything fast and smooth enough that nothing had respawned as I headed back up to the top level, and once there booked it for the northern end. There were two more wisps floating there beyond the door, but I blew the Split Chained Slashing Shardrays as I came in, one primary to each, Chaining to the other, and as I leapt over the mana trap in the floor there, they both blew apart. I headed down and around the stairs, a green-scaled sclavus and red-scaled moarsman at the bottom blocking the split there.

The same SCS Shardrays drove through them, tearing them apart and getting them out of my path as I came down the steps at a trot. I stepped over the torn bodies, unafraid of gore which was already falling apart into ectoplasm, heading for the jump room leading to the final area. It was a pit a good sixty feet deep. The sclavus and wisp there seemed to react to my presence up above when the door opened, already trying to reach out with Drains that couldn't harm me in the slightest.

That was fine, I also reacted to theirs. The Piercing Shards went punching down, impaled and blew away the pink swirl of the wisp, then the Echoed set joined the Slashing version in slamming into the sclavus there as I hopped off the edge. Once, the innate magic of the world would have allowed adventurers to jump off these ledges without any problem, but no longer.

It was a good way to get broken bones trying that, and grab bing ropes to rappel down was actually something the younger adventurers had to do to avoid taking damage. A paramount could still make the jump, sure, but even they hoarded their Health far more than they used to. Featherweight grabbed me a foot from the floor, my plummet down became a casual drift as I set down easily, and I trotted down the hallway quickly, but not quickly enough to keep my Repeated and Residual Metas going.

It was fine, the final room was a bunch of moarsmen and wisps in a convenient circle. I came down the steps silently, marked the non-Good presences on my Zealous Detect Evil, and let the same Split Chained Slashing Shardrays go at them, targeting the two strongest directly, then the Chains ripping out to lash through all of them, moars and wisps alike, in a wild whirlwind of rotating blades of force chewing through all of them with violent power.

There were two moarsmen up in a side room and stairs to the east, the final creatures to be cleared, and the mossy jade key was on one of the dead moarsmen in the main room. A specific Locate Object at short range was enough to pick it out, Minor TK brought it to my hand, and I was heading back for the jump down.

Once, there had been a Portal to the outside at the bottom here, the sheer incongruity of having an instant exit from a Dungeon that the monsters never used basically screaming the fact that this place was completely arranged and artificial, even if the endlessly repeated Summons didn't blare the fact to anyone with a lick of common sense. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

No, now you had to climb your way back out, which meant that rope you threw over into the pit had to be prepared ahead of time, and you had to know how and be able to use it. Instead, I touched the wall, and Shaped the Stone there in the corner. Getting some masons in here to do the work was a no-go with the continual respawn of the monsters, sometimes drawing the whole horde from the main room to join the fun if things got loud and unfortunate enough.

Nobody high-Level wanted to babysit some masons working in harnesses to make a stone ladder in the wall, or set up some stairs. Basically I made a set of stone rungs set into the wall that anyone could use to climb out of this place… including the Summons with limbs, if they'd been able to leave their posts to do so. I also made a 'fire pole', a four-inch column of stone leading right up to the ceiling above, that the daring and strong could use to slide down without trouble.

Myself, I just Levitated up, parkouring up the corner as I did so, rapidly making it to the top and heading back up the stairs to get out of there.

The watcher up above blinked at my very sudden return, far sooner than he'd had any reason to expect. I held up the moss-jade key, and he stared at it in disbelief. Only one of them could exist at a time, and if it wasn't used in Lady Adja's Chest, it faded at Renewal (dawn), so nobody could stockpile them. I scampered past him to the outside, ignoring the shocked calls as I came out, while everyone looked at the clock there. Five minutes? For a Total Clear? That was, that was impossible!

Just like my Completion yesterday, which had been under three minutes!

"Out of the way!" Princess Kristie snarled, and the people who'd been shuffling forward and blocking the ramp up to the Cathedral hurriedly stepped back to let me race past at speed. Up the stairs to the second floor, climb out the window, jump to the floating ramp, follow it around, jump through the third floor window to her private study up there, and under the eyes of the judge there, insert the moss-jade key into the intricately engraved floral chest there.

There was a hiss and click, the key dissipated, and the chest sprang open.

"TIME!" the judge shouted, and the clock stopped at 4: 55. I could hear the crowd's roars of amazement and disbelief from up there in the room, and even the Judge there shook his head in disbelief. The chest itself was completely empty, whatever magic that had once powered it inactive and spent. The only thing it retained was a lock that could only be opened by that specific key, no goddamn logical reason for it being on the bottom of the Catacombs except to make people jump through hoops to get it.

"That is an incredible achievement, young lady," the judge, a seemingly middle-aged paramount called Cluster, complimented me while looking at his watch.

"Do you know how to Cast while sprinting, Magos?" he joked, but his eyes were glittering with great interest. Odd names were very common among the paramounts, a tradition that had begun long ago with the first people to come through the Portals. It was considered a sign of leaving the old world behind and embracing this new place and all the strange magical things that happened here, becoming a new person and what it meant to be a true adventurer here.

Plenty of people did carry over their family names, and often the adventurers returned to them in time. But still, nobody called Lord Mick anything but The Mick now, even if they knew he was a McMikal. Likewise, Princess Kristie was The Hag Princess, a name she embraced with proper fervor and the ability to become extremely violent at the drop of a hat, enthusiastically beating the utter shit out of anyone who chose to mock or belittle her. Me, I was just Ryin, The Lady Magos…

which, while completely true, had become a clear mark of respect during the last six months.

"I understand slidecasting was a precious skill before the Fall, Elder," I replied respectfully.

"Surely you don't think such skills didn't have a broader foundation?" I asked him. His eyes almost lit up. Knowledge of the things coming out of the lessons I taught were only whispers, things my students used but did not talk about with anyone outside their numbers. Everyone was trying to learn what I was doing. Magic was power, and everyone wanted power now. Much of their attention was distracted by 'The Hunt for Cleaving', as it was coming to be called, but it was all still there.

"I trust that this is something that will be shared with others?" he asked leadingly. My generosity to my students was quite well-known. To others outside them, not so much. It wasn't much different from how Kris was teaching Royal Scouts profound Feats and Masteries, and introducing the Matrix Classes. I just laughed softly.

"Everything in time, elder, everything in time," I replied with a wink at him. I hopped towards the window, and then down to the ground, Featherweight catching me and slowing my fall ten feet above the ground, turning a plummet into a casual wafting to the green grass about the Cathedral.

Kris was chortling as we walked away towards the trail that led to the opposite side of the Cathedral, where the gaping hole to the Quiddity Seed D ungeon yawned open, ready to take all comers.

"First time you do a Complete, and you set the record for it. I see why you held off doing an official run all this time." The demand for the Dungeon and the Karma of its spawns was high, so people were typically restricted to one run a day, and that for the upper levels, since few wanted to jump into the Pit at all and have to clamber or be hauled back up.

I'd run the Dungeon a few times to get the lay of it, the many Drain Traps present there, and where all the levers and things were, but mostly I just did it for the Karma. The fact I was fast on my turn had been noticed, but since I'd never declared going into the pit at the bottom, they'd not called me out on it, other than noting I was damn speedy for my perceived Level. Said Level now sitting nicely at 114, my backlog of Karma cleared after all these months, and steadily added to, day by day.

I didn't get to shift all the levers at the same time, as I used to, but I still managed one or two for Mira a day.

"Apologies for setting the bar high. I'm sure they'll note it was a Caster soon, so as to avoid any 'real' competition," I replied to her.

"Oh, and I put in the pole and the rungs, too. Should be more people clearing the pit, now that they are there."

"Good. I'm signed up to do a Clear on it tomorrow, we'll see how well I measure up to those paramounts." I just laughed softly, as Kris didn't spend much time in the Catacombs, not when the Quiddity Seed was there, and much more fun for her. That was where we were going now, getting ready to do a Timed Clear on the most dangerous Dungeon of the Vesayan Islands.